Dinner With Alex | Chelsea Lane Campbell

Dinner with Alex, two hours too late.
She consoles me with amber words of optimism:
"We'll find it; someone will find it".
What I know, but we both do not say
is that the someone will not be me
or her, but someone
who is unaware that the white gold
cross-banded
3 diamond promise ring I carelessly dropped
on the blacktop outside
is not from a man who offered me the role
of wife and mother,
but from the man who has dressed me
in the role of daughter and therapist.
Without that ring,
I am stripped of them both.